Ten weeks into the college football season and after Statement Saturday we have a picture of where teams stack up against each other. While I agree with the top six teams of the three major polls, I have some major shakeup throughout the rest of the list. I think the playoff committee has overvalued some teams in a big way while not giving some other programs the credit they deserve. To make myself clear – this is not a ranking of how likely I think it is that teams will be among the final four, because many of them are eliminated already or because I never thought they had a chance to get voted into the playoff. It rather is me grading the resume and as the analysts like to say – who is most deserving – but also how good these teams are compared to each other.

Finishing up on my top five positional rankings for this upcoming NCAA football season, we switch over to the defensive side of the ball. Once again, these lists are about where those guys stack up as college players – not as eventual draft prospects. So the criteria I base them on is the tape I watched on them the last couple of seasons and the jump I project them to make this year. With that being said, I can’t help but look ahead to some degree, since I could easily see eight defensive players drafted in the top ten next April and most of them should be on the D-line.

After revealing my most intriguing storylines heading into the 2018 college football season, I wanted to release my top five positional rankings, like I did a year ago as well. To make the criteria clear – this list is about the actual college players, as a combination of what they showed me last season and what I expect them to be in 2018. So this is not a look forward to these young men as draft prospects in 2019. Therefore, you might find some names that won’t be discussed a lot from next February to April. With that being said, I want to start with the offensive side of the ball and I will get back to defense next week.

It’s been a while since I last talked about the college game, since I consider the draft as more of an NFL topic. But don’t misjudge me – I’m extremely thrilled for this upcoming year. With that in mind, I thought about the topics I believe could rule the college football season. To some degree even more so than in the pros, conferences and the success of individual teams can vary on a yearly basis. Of course there are those juggernauts we expect to be back at the top in December, but some players and different programs come out of nowhere every single year and with homefield advantages, upsets are a fixture on the schedule.

This week down in Mobile, Alabama is one of my favorite ones of the year. More than a hundred of Senior prospects for this upcoming draft are put into positions, where they are comfortable in, but also some they are not used to. The organization’s staff does an excellent job bringing together some of the top talents in the country and it’s not just about these kids from the big-name schools, but rather they give some lesser known guys a chance to show off. This really is a chance for young players to boost their draft stock. Look no further than Temple’s Haason Reddick a year ago, who went from being considered a potential late day two pick, to being selected 13th overall by the Arizona Cardinals. We saw some superstars emerge from this event in recent years and there’s a good chance someone on this list will be in that category a few years down the line.

After having two different conferences represented in the title game for the last six years, this is the first time since 2012 the two contenders are coming from the SEC. While Georgia won the conference title, Alabama didn’t even get the chance to play in the championship game. With Kirby Smart facing off against his former head coach Nick Saban and two teams that are built similar, there’s lots to talk about. Over the next couple of paragraphs, I want to analyze the paths of both these programs heading into the matchup, how they will approach it, under-the-radar contributors and the outcome of the game. Alabama has been crowned national champions four times since 2009, while Georgia is looking to do so for the first time since 1980. It’s dynasty versus contender, teacher versus student, the Tide versus the Bulldogs.

With another crazy week of college football, which included four of the top 13 teams in the country losing, I decided to make my own top 25 rankings. I largely agree with the top ten of the CFP and AP lists, I just flipped around numbers six to eight a bit. After that, I trust what I see when I put on the games each Saturday (and when I study the tape throughout the week). Of course I also have to take an outlook for each program into consideration as well, because I just can’t put any two-loss team from the Power Five, which doesn’t even have a chance to play in the conference championship game, above one who still basically controls their own destiny and has a chance to leave a mark on me and the committee. Without further ado, here’s my list: